Two emergencies at Skopje Airport

There’s a reason airlines have less passengers on Fridays the 13th

Friday the 13th turned out to be a truly unlucky day at Macedonia’s largest airport – Skopje or known to locals as Alexander the Great Airport. During the evening hours, yesterday, two incidents occurred one after the other. For the story to be even more intriguing the aircraft involved in the two separate incidents were from the same type from the manufacturer, the Canadian Bombardier. The type in question was the imperfect Dash 8. The first incident occurred after the Malev Dash 8, arriving from Budapest experienced an engine failure while approaching Skopje Airport. Malev's pilot informed Skopje's radar control that one of the engines is not working and for the authorities to prepare the runway for an emergency landing. Thanks to the pilot's capabilities the plane landed safely with 68 passengers onboard. Shortly after, Malev's drama was replaced by an Austrian Airlines flight which took off from Skopje only to report back to flight control that its landing gear is stuck in the landing position. The plane quickly turned around and landed safely. Both planes incident will be investigated.

Regular readers might remember that Croatia Airlines’ Dash 8 has been involved in various security incidents in the past few months. Experts state that the aircraft is unreliable. SAS Scandinavian Airlines withdrew the aircraft from its entire fleet after numerous incidents that involved landing gear collapses and engine failures. The plane type was also recently involved in the fatal Buffalo, New York crash killing 48 people on board.

To all Happy St. Valentine’s Day!